THERE will be three games against the Mets at the Stadium starting tonight in a series whose ceremonial importance is understood by everyone, even if the symbolism exceeds its direct impact on the standings.

Then there will be three games in Baltimore beginning Monday in a series against the division-leading Orioles they trail by five games, and whose immediate consequence cannot be understated.

But no game was more important to the Yankees than the one they played at home last night against the Devil Rays, who’d taken two of the three of the series this week and six of the first nine games between the teams this season.

Is this any way to win a division?

“Every game we let slip away from us is one more game off the schedule that we can’t get back,” Joe Torre was saying before the game.

“We can’t continue to say there’s plenty of time left, because eventually we won’t be telling the truth.”

Torre’s team went into last night’s game 7-2 on the homestand, yet the losses on Monday and Wednesday have recreated the distinct impression that the Yankees are still the Big Engine That Can’t. Or Won’t.

Three games over .500 three days into the summer just isn’t good enough.

“We’re still looking to take control,” Torre said. “We can talk about it until we’re blue in the face, but we have to do it. We need to be a little more consistent in our day-to-day approach on an every day basis.

“We need to grind.”

Everyone knows what grinding means in hockey, where the team that’s hungrier for the puck than its opponent invariably wins far more often than not.

A basketball team can grind by diving for loose balls, by muscling up for inside position on shots off the glass.

A football team can grind by having its line impose its physical will on the guys on the other side of the ball.

But how does a baseball team grind?

“By coming home all bloody and dirty – even if not literally,” Torre said. “By biting and scratching and by each player making sure he’s a blue-collar guy.

“You can see it in baseball, you can measure that in baseball; certainly if you’re the manager and you see players every single day from the vantage point of being in the dugout with them.”

Both Torre and Derek Jeter, in an earlier conversation at his locker, pronounced themselves satisfied with the team’s recent work ethic.

Jeter, who two weeks ago called out the Yankees following their hideous 8-1 loss in St. Louis on June 12, said he believed there’d been a measurable improvement in the club’s intensity and attentiveness to detail.

“I don’t think we’ve been as consistent on the whole as we need to be, but I’m comfortable that we’re going to get there,” he said.

But in order for the Yankees to get there – to first place; to the playoffs, anyway – they’re going to have to do more than simply grind. That’s the bare minimum.

They’re going to have to win games; a lot of them. And they’re going to have to win games like they lost on Wednesday, when they couldn’t hold a 3-2 lead in the seventh before going down 5-3 – just like the one they lost in St. Louis on June 14 when they couldn’t hold a 2-1 lead in the seventh before going down 5-3 in that one, too.

Those are the games the Yankees will have to win, because those are the games the Yankees have always won before.

Those the games that, if necessary, the Yankees were going to have to begin winning last night.